


How To Shovel Snow Properly, by Will Graham

by thebeespatella



Series: Branco di Lupi [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bisexuality is a real thing, M/M, Restless Yearning, What's new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 18:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5881390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/thebeespatella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“So sit your gay-for-Dr. Lecter-ass down and let us shovel,” Bev says.</i>
</p><p><i>“</i>I’m not gay for—”</p><p>
  <i>“Shut up,” they both say, with fond exasperation.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I might just be gay for everybody,” you say defensively. Oh, boy. That did not come out sounding like a joke.</i>
</p><div class="center">
  <p>--</p>
</div>Set sometime after the events of Canto IX in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5529896/chapters/12761201">For the Sins of the Wolf.</a>
            </blockquote>





	How To Shovel Snow Properly, by Will Graham

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [em_c_writes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/em_c_writes). Thank you so much for helping me and listening to my alternately silly/serious Hannigram thoughts. Also for everyone on the East Coast who endured the snow earlier this month.
> 
> Pls just live with the formatting, I have wrangled with it 5ever. <3

 

  1. Make yourself a cup of coffee. Put the tiny cup thing into Bev’s Keurig, watch it skeptically. It’s still absurd to you—as a good ol’ grind-your-own-beans sort of man—that the little plastic thing could contain enough grounds or whatever to make a decent cup of coffee, but it works.
  2. The grounds are probably dehydrated and packed in and mourning their artificial existence.
  3. Grab your mug of coffee, fumble around in your coat pocket and pull out a cigarette to stick in your mouth. Bev would 2 million percent kill you if you smoked in the house, so you leave it unlit for now. Precariously balancing the mug, stick your hand in the drawer next to the stove for the mail key.
  4. Did Abigail leave it in the mailbox again?
  5. There are probably generations of Georgetown students who have lived in your ratty old house in Burleith before you. You know this because you keep getting their fucking mail, although, as you have to remind Bev all the time, opening someone else’s mail is a federal offence.
  6. There it is.
  7. Walk outside into the bracing air and kick the door shut behind you. Your newspaper is resting in a bed of frozen-over concrete, the little blue protective sleeve rustling in the breeze. The wind bites at your cheeks as you stoop to pick it up, spill a little coffee onto your front, think better of it. You dip your hand into your pocket for a lighter.
  8. The first drag of the day always feels like living despite how much it tastes like death.
  9. You should definitely quit. Soon. Like, next year. Definitely before 2018. It’s bad for you.
  10. _And it wouldn’t do to ruin your palate_ , Hannibal whispers in your ear. When you shiver, it’s not just the snapping breeze.
  11. Do _not_ think about Hannibal. Jesus. It is too goddamn early to think about Hannibal.
  12. When you crane your neck to look down the street, you can see the garbage truck making its slow way from house to house, partially obscured by the bones of the winter trees. Wedge the door open, put down the coffee, stub out your cigarette.
  13. Grab your snow shovel, the pail that holds the blue ice melt stuff, and a flathead screwdriver.
  14. (You never know).
  15. Make your way around to the driveway. You guys rent out the parking spaces for a hilariously exorbitant amount of money, and it pays for your utilities. When the weather’s mild (and Abigail _fucking controls_ _herself_ around the thermostat), it even chips in for some good liquor.
  16. The back gate is definitely frozen shut.
  17. Trudge all the way back into and through the house, and then go out the back door. Promptly whack your face against the doorframe, slipping on ice somebody tracked in late last night.
  18. Bite your tongue against the pain, steady yourself. Then sprinkle some salt right there on the floor. There’s a certain satisfaction in the crunching noise it makes underfoot. Sprinkle some more.
  19. Go out into the backyard. Your foot will sink immediately into the snow, and you’re going to get some snow in your sock. You wonder why you bother going outside at all when your limbs are this unruly.
  20. Retrieve your errant foot from the powdery snow, and devise a clear path from the back door to the gate, and the garage. You will also have to figure out how to clear the ice from the gate without breaking your face, but first things first.
  21. Enjoy that first crunch of snow as it falls victim to the blade of the shovel.
  22. Enjoy it less as the shovel hits ice.
  23. Fall into a steady rhythm, gauging the depth of the snow and working as much as possible into the curvature of the shovel. Fling the snow into random corners of the yard as you clear a path to the gate first, throwing down handfuls of salt as you go. It’s nice, easy work—you like physical labor for this exact reason, that there’s a dull ache in your back and your arms from the repetitive strain of lifting, that it feels like your joints are creaking in the cold. It’s mindless. For once, your thoughts are more like the placid snowfall and less like a beehive: flat, white, quiet. Even when you take a break, leaning heavily on the shovel handle propped up against the weight of the snow, it’s nice, sucking in icy breaths and feeling them inhabit your poor abused lungs for a second. It’s the perfect convergence of productivity and nothingness that you wish you could inhabit more.
  24. It also serves as a good, righteous reminder that you’re a scholarship kid who’s had to do actual manual labor before, unlike the some of the spoiled fucks you’re bidden to call classmates, but they aren’t your mates in any sort of class at all. Georgetown’s financial planning is contingent on at least 50 percent of students paying full tuition. Which is fucking ridiculous.
  25. Too early to think about that, too.
  26. Eventually you make it to the back gate, and take a second. You can feel the damp heat of sweat gathering under your clothes, so you shrug off your heavy jacket for the time being. It’s safer to do that now than to be stuck sweating in the cold later.
  27. Leaning over, you chip at the ice sealing the back gate shut with your screwdriver for a minute, then give it up as a bad job. Your palm hurts from slamming into the shovel handle to wrench it through the snow, and then into the butt of the screwdriver handle to get at the ice. The cheap wood will have warped and contracted in the frigid air anyway, so you decide to leave it.
  28. Your other hand hurts, too. It’s still in its wrappings from the night before—you’ve grown careless as it’s healed. As you turn it over, skin papery and dry from winter underneath the messy bandage, you suddenly recall the heat of Hannibal’s fingers, his _mouth_ , tracing over the edges of the wound, the way his eyes had been molten fixed to yours. The memory induces a full-body shudder, like your spine has been cracked like a whip.
  29. You shake your head briskly, then turn to the challenge of clearing the snow in the parking space. Considering the gate, you’re going to have to go back inside and then around to get to it.
  30. You go back in and dump your jacket on a chair, just in time for Abigail and Bev to come down the stairs.
  31. “What the fuck, Will,” Bev sighs by way of greeting, shoving another pod into the coffee machine.
  32. “How’s your hand?” Abigail asks, pulling a cup of yogurt out from the fridge.



“Seriously, you shouldn't be fucking shoveling,” Bev says. “Like, would it kill you to just _not_ for a second.”

“Not what?” you say blithely. What remains of your coffee has gone cold but you sip it anyway.

“Just—let us help you,” Bev says. “Jesus, Graham. For once.”

“I don’t need help,” you protest. “I like doing it, anyway.”

“Fine. You get the backyard, but Abigail and I are doing the parking space. Deal?”

“I already did the backyard.”

“I know.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Not the _worst,_ ” Abigail chimes in. “The _worst_ would let Dr. Lecter know that you’re over-exerting yourself. Damaging your hand.”

You put your face into your hands. “Why are you like this,” you groan. Abigail’s precision with persuasion is frankly eerie and terrifying. For all you dream imagined things about pain and crying and hatred, she has another sort of sense for people altogether, scenting the air like a clever bloodhound. “You wouldn’t.”

“I _would_ ,” Abigail sing-songs.

“So sit your gay-for-Dr. Lecter-ass down and let us shovel,” Bev says.

“ _I’m not gay for—_ ”

“Shut up,” they both say, with fond exasperation.

“I might just be gay for everybody,” you say defensively.

Oh, boy. That did not come out sounding like a joke.

This time, Bev’s eyes are sharp on you, roving for a second. The air in the kitchen is more frozen than the sidewalk outside. “Well,” she says, finally, “considering Dr. Lecter is part of _everybody_ , your ass is still gay for _somebody._ Namely, Dr. Lecter’s body.” She winks at him and blows on her steaming mug of coffee.

“I mean—I don’t _know_ that I—”

“You don’t _have_ to know.” Bev cuts you off brusquely. “Just know that you and Dr. Lecter have got it _bad_ , right in the _gay ass feelings_ , and rarely have my gay ass feelings been wrong.”

“She called Zeller and Price,” Abigail points out.

“Exactly.”

(You concede that you’d just thought they were _extraordinarily_ _close friends_ until Bev had rolled her eyes at you, mouth still full of bagel and cream cheese, and said, “They’re fucking, duh.”)

“I don’t know if Dr. Lecter has gay ass feelings for me,” you say.

“Are you _kidding—_ ” If you didn’t know better, you’d say Abigail looks outraged.

“He hasn’t done anything since Thanksgiving!” you explode, jumping to your feet. This question, this insecurity, has been nipping at you for weeks now and is now showing its teeth. “He might have been _drunk_ , I don’t know, but he just acts like it never happened, but still invites me to _talk_ in his office, and I don’t know what that means, and sometimes he _looks_ at me, like he—like he wants to _eat_ me, but that’s probably me just reading it because I’m pathetic and lonely—”

“Maybe,” Bev says, far too calm. “But maybe he just doesn’t want to start anything while you’re still his student.”

“Maybe,” you say, grudgingly acknowledging her logic and sitting back down. “But would it kill him to let me know?”

“Maybe,” Abigail says. Her spoon smacks into the bottom of the sink as she throws it in, done with her yogurt. “Maybe if he talks about it or thinks about it near you, he’ll go rabid and just go ham.”

“ _Ham_ ,” you scoff. “What do you mean, _ham_ —”

“Just rabid,” Abigail says, fighting a smile. “He’s going to have to have you immediately.”

“You’re getting fucked on the teacher’s desk, Graham,” Bev deadpans. “Just accept it now.”

Unbidden, the image pops into your mind: the two of you in the dimness of Healy 104, pants around your ankles, your hands trapped to the desk by Hannibal’s larger ones, the hot heat of his mouth on your neck as your face is pressed into the desk, as he fucks you _wide open_ —

“Prob—probably not, but thanks, guys,” you manage. 

“Did you just get hot thinking about that?” Bev says incredulously. “Jesus, you are _fucked_ for this man."

“He’s not,” you mutter. “For me.”

“He is,” Abigail says, almost affectionately. “He totally is. You didn’t see the way he looked at you. I did.”

You don’t trust yourself to meet either of their eyes right now, so instead you look at the ragged edges of the bandages on your hand. Eye contact is usually leagues easier with either of them than it is with anyone else; you don’t even have to wear your glasses.

Beverly sighs, and snatches the shovel before you can protest, going to pull on her boots and coat. “You’re a _goner_ , Graham. Absolutely and completely.”

“Bev,” you try, one last time. “Bev, it’s really nothing, I’m not gone, it was just this one—I don’t think, it’s really not—”

She’s already out the door, but she pokes her head back in to say, “If you don’t have an ass full of Lecter by the end of this year, I’m going to be fucking disappointed.”

  1. Gaping like a guppy after Bev wasn’t on the agenda for this morning, but then again, neither was this conversation. Abigail comes over to drop a hand in your hair, and you lean against her gratefully, suddenly feeling the pent-up hours of sleeplessness all at once. “I might go back to bed,” you murmur.



“I’ll stay down here, then.” She cocks an eyebrow at you, and you look up at her in confusion for a second.

“ _No_ —Abigail! Not to _jerk off_ because—desks—Hannibal—”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” She’s laughing her ass off as you press your hands to your eyes. “Oh, my God, Abigail, stop.”

“I can’t—” She’s legitimately gasping for breath, she’s laughing so hard. You vaguely remember that she has asthma through the blazing haze of embarrassment. Your skin is hot even under your own hands, and you want to deny it all, but you thought, at least, you’d been quiet— “I’m just fucking with you, Will. I’m sorry.” She’s still smiling, far too widely. “Get some sleep.”

“Fuck you,” you say, but it's not an answer. You don’t have an answer except to hop up the stairs and slide underneath the covers in your semi-dark room, which is speckled with white winter light through tree limbs.

  1. Roll your shoulders and settle on the pillow, trying to loosen yourself for sleep. Close your eyes and take deep, heavy breaths. You can hear the rolling of the plow—one of, like, three in the District—rumbling across the road. The steady crunch of someone walking, bravely venturing out in the snow. Inside, you’re snug and warm. The next few days will be hellish, as the city tries to get its shit together and get through what is, admittedly, a pretty bad storm.
  2. You recall seeing penguins on TV and asking your dad what snow was—he’d told you you’d both go see it someday. He has yet to come up to Georgetown, not that it snows that often anyway. D.C. is more often just rainy, albeit freezing rain.
  3. Deep breaths.
  4. You can still feel the light tickling your eyelids. You can only turn over to try avoid it, too lazy to fuck with the blinds. You blink once. Sleep drags on the tips of your eyelashes, pleasant.
  5. You can’t control where your mind goes when sleep takes the reins, but it doesn’t matter. For once you let yourself wander, images coming in bursts. You remember the feeling of Hannibal’s body against your own, the solidity of his hands against your own.
  6. Opening your eyes would dispel the image, but the arousal sitting in your belly is comfortable, lazy, slow. So that’s how you fall asleep—warm with the memory of Hannibal’s embrace.




End file.
